The Samhanach Page 7

  “So can I.” He looked at her with some measure of surprise, and she added, “Women are equal in 2010, Connell.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “Mus’ be a strange world indeed.”

  They waited in silence a few seconds, then Merran cried out in frustration. “Where the hell is it?! You’re sure this is the right place?”

  “I told ye, I’ve been here every day for a year. ‘Tis the right place.”

  Her watch read 11:31.

  She performed a quick mental calculation in her mind: It’d taken them ten minutes to get here from Connell’s cave, and she thought it’d taken her about ten minutes to get through the cave. She was looking at least twenty minutes, then, to get back to the toadstool ring.

  Unless whatever was going to happen, happened soon…

  “I’m not going to make it –”

  She broke off as the surface of the swamp eight feet away began to churn. Something breached the water and continued to rise up, up, and she saw the oversized head with blazing features, the apelike limbs – and, clutched against the hollow chest, a child-sized bundle wrapped in some sort of translucent skin. Like a birth caul.

  “No, Merran,” came a voice like a fierce wind grinding down a rock wall, “you’re not going to make it. Not you, nor your child.”

  “Jeannie –!” She tried to make out features through the strange, oily sac, and she thought she saw her daughters face, the mouth opening and closing slightly.

  “Your child now belongs to me, to do with as I will.”

  Connell stepped forward, his own voice a harsh growl. “Demon! Wha’ of my child, who you stole from me a year ago?!”

  The Samhanach’s mouth twisted in glee. “Ahh. That one now dwells with the faerie queen and her court. I doubt if she even remembers you now.”

  Connell cried out in distress and swung the torch, but the Samhanach was still three feet past Connell’s reach.

  The bogie moved its scarlet gaze down towards Jeannie, who either slept or was held captive in the caul. “As for this one, I’m still undecided. Perhaps a gift to the great carrion birds of Cruachan, who are always hungry –”

  Merran stepped forward and gestured with the knife. “Let go of my daughter!”

  The demon eyed her with vicious amusement. “Are you sure?”

  Her body tensing, Merran answered: “You’ve tormented my family for three centuries, you bastard. It ends tonight.”

  The Samhanach uttered a deafening sound that caused Merran to flinch, and that she could only assume was its laughter.

  Then it dropped Jeannie.

  For a split second, Merran stared in disbelief as the bog began to pull her daughter’s immobile body beneath its black surface. Then she leapt, all rational thought fled, banished before the image of her daughter lost forever in the depths of a lightless bog in a world of monsters. She reached with her left hand for Jeannie, even as she felt the swamp tugging at her. Her hand clamped onto the sac around the child, and it felt strangely organic, like an organ, or a skinned animal. She tried to haul Jeannie out, but she was fighting both the sac and the swamp. So she raised the knife, and drew it along the surface of the caul. The membrane split beneath the blade, and suddenly Jeannie was crying and reaching out.

  “Ha’e her ta’e this!”

  Merran looked back and saw Connell extending his spear. She pulled Jeannie free from the sac, and let the swamp take the horrible thing; then she saw Jeannie’s hands grasp the wooden haft, and Connell was pulling her to shore, she was free –

  The Samhanach reached after her.

  Merran saw the hand move past her, and she swung out blindly with the knife. It connected with the thing’s sinuous arm, and the bogie shrieked, wounded, as hot ichor splattered the swamp around Merran.

  She wasn’t going to let it retreat. The swamp surface was almost up to her chest now, and this would be her only chance. She rallied the last of her strength and swung the knife in a great overhead arc. A wild exhilaration surged through her as she buried the knife up to the hilt in the Samhanach’s midsection, and its scream of rage and terror and agony told her that she’d wounded it badly, even mortally. She withdrew the knife and stabbed again, and again, and then the thing was sinking into the bog, still shrieking, and she was being dragged down with it. The swamp closed over her mouth, nose, eyes…

  And it was acceptable, because Jeannie was safe, and even though Connell couldn’t take her home, he’d make sure they both survived here, and the Samhanach would never answer another call for vengeance –

  She felt something slap her left hand, the only part of her still left above the swamp’s surface.

  It was Connell’s spear.

  She wrapped her hand around it. She didn’t think she’d be able to hang on, but she found new reserves of strength as she was pulled up, out of the bog. Her head broke the surface and she gasped for air.

  “Both hands now!”

  That was Connell. She squinted through the muck in her eyes, and saw him crouched on shore…

  With Jeannie standing beside him, looking bedraggled and desperate.

  She thrust her right hand up out of the swamp, and saw it still held the knife. She tossed the knife up onto the bank, then grasped Connell’s spear with the other hand. He groaned as he put his weight into pulling, and slowly, so slowly, she came free of the bog, her shoulders on the shore, then her chest, waist, and finally she pulled her legs free.

  Connell collapsed beside her, panting in exertion and relief. Jeannie’s hands were around her neck, both of them covered in the bog’s thick, dark slime. Merran allowed herself a moment of relief, then she remembered –

  Her watch said 11:43.

  “Oh God.” She lurched to her feet, much to Jeannie’s surprise.

  “Mommy –”

  “Baby, we’ve got to go. NOW.”

  Connell was already on his feet. He paused just long enough to retrieve the knife and the torch, then he took the lead on the path. “This way.”

  Merran knelt before Jeannie. “Can you move?”

  Jeannie nodded, her eyes wide.

  And so they ran.

  Coming Home

  They ran through the forest, and nothing tried to stop them. When Jeannie stumbled, Merran picked her up and ran with her, even after every muscle threatened to snap and breath scorched lungs.

  At 11:51, they reached the cave mouth.

  “You won’t need the torch,” Merran told him. He nodded silently, tossed it aside, and they entered the cave, Connell in the lead.

  They made their way through the same glowing maze, around corners and beneath low-hanging stalactites.

  At 11:57, they left the last twist of the cave and saw Merran’s front door.

  She threw it open, and there was the faerie version of her yard, complete with grimacing jack-o’-lanterns waiting.

  The toadstool ring was glowing so brightly it was incandescent, causing Merran to squint. She started down the porch steps, saying to Connell: “Be careful of the pumpkins – they’re alive.”

  “Merran…”

  Something in his tone caused her to stop and turn back. Connell stood on the porch, her knife still clenched in his hand, his features creased in anxiety.

  “I cannae gae.”

  She stopped, staring at him silently for a moment; in Merran’s arms, Jeannie also looked on, still wiping silt from her eyes. “Connell, of course you have to come. You can’t stay here…"

  "I’ve no choice, lassie. D’ye nae remember the old tales?” Merran hesitated, thinking back to the Scottish folklore, stories of those who returned from trips to the Otherworld, stepped back onto homeground – And died instantly from old age. Of course – Connell would be over 130 years old in the human world.

  “Oh God. Oh, Connell, I’m so sorry…”

  He stepped down and gave her a gentle push. “Ye’ve no time lef ’. Go now.”

  She nodded, feeling the tears again, but knowing she couldn’t afford that luxury
right now. Clutching her daughter tightly, she leapt quickly over the pumpkins until she’d reached the edge of the blinding white ring. Then she turned to look back one last time.

  Connell smiled and gestured with the knife. “Oh, if ye dinnae mind – I’ll keep the knife. It might help when I find Aileen."

  "It's yours, anyway." She and Connell shared a last look, of grief and victory and mutual blood. Then she stepped into the ring.

  By Dawn’s Light

  Merran blinked, the afterglow of the faerie circle still burned onto her retinas...

  So it took her a moment to realize the sky overhead was light, pale blue, brighter to the east.

  Sunrise.

  When her vision cleared, she looked down at the ground. Although it was still dim, she could see that the toadstools had withered, become nothing but tiny dried caps buried in the grass. The unlit jack-o’-lanterns lay scattered about the lawn, now just outdated decorations.

  Merran toed one just to be sure.

  Convinced that she was home and safe, she staggered to the front porch and sat there, cradling Jeannie in her lap. “You okay?”

  The little girl nodded. “Are we home?”

  “We’re home, baby.”

  Merran glanced at her watch, saw that it read 12:02. She’d have to remember to reset it.

  The dawn was chilly, and she hugged Jeannie tightly, for warmth and love. Her thoughts kept returning to Connell, left behind in an inhuman world, searching for his own daughter armed with nothing more than a knife.

  In time, she hoped she’d be able to think of him without feeling regret, loss, even guilt.

  At this moment, though, she knew she had to focus on herself, on Jeannie. Things would be different. Will was a minor boogeyman now, nothing but a scuttling lesser imp. She had more important things to deal with, like her own life, and her daughter’s.

  But most of all, she tried not to remember the other old stories, of changelings, those stolen by mischievous sprites and switched with unearthly children. Merran’s mind kept returning to the image of Jeannie in what looked like a birth sac, held in the arms of the Samhanach as it taunted Connell with the notion of his child now an alien thing, lacking memories of her former humanity. Merran promised herself that she wouldn’t watch obsessively for signs of odd behavior on the part of her daughter, that she’d always love her, no matter what the future might bring.

  Then she sat on the steps of her own home, with her daughter, and watched the sun rise over the quiet neighborhood, the beginning of a new day.

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